Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Got Catfished by a Candidate

saastr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 662 posts

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#201

Post by andrewstuart »

lovich wrote: post #185
andrewstuart wrote: post #72

I'm a recruiter. Three anecdotes come to mind for this topic: #1 I once sent out a coding test email to a candidate. Not long after I got an email back from this candidate saying "Hey bro could you do this test for me please." or words to that effect. Obviously mistakenly forwarded it back to me instead of to his bro who he wanted to do his coding test. #2 I definitely got catfished but it was by another recruiter wh…

Maybe hire one of the devs you interact with to search for duplicates? Searching for duplicates substrings isn't necessarily something that could be done off the shelf but it shouldn't be too hard for a competent dev to get you a working process

I'm a developer - I could do it but I can't be bothered - not important, merely interesting.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#202

Post by segmondy »

Lot's of candidates lie. The one test that we gave that most people copied was converting decimal to roman number. They copied the first solution that they found, variable names, etc. the few times they changed the variable names, they kept the same number of spacing, braces in same position.

So one line might have "if (...){ " where another has "if(...){"

How demanding can this be? Once money is involved, folks will do almost anything. I had to fire a recruiter once for asking me to lie. Updated my resume, sent me the updated copy with tools I don't know and have no intention of learning and said he was going to use that.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#203

Post by lovich »

abiox wrote: post #193
freeone3000 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a contractor . That's the difference between him and an employee: He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. If he's not allowed to do this, chances are you have an employee.

> He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. all of this is entirely within the scope of the contract. "subcontracting" is unlikely to be permissible in a variety of scenarios, especially if the material being worked on is even vaguely sensitive. when it does happen, it's typically in a larger organizational context and then there will usually be some vetting or approval process.

If you are controlling how work is done then you have an employee. If subcontracting is unacceptable and you are still hiring contractors then you are just trying to run around employment law, at least in the US

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#204

Post by AmericanChopper »

lovich wrote: post #194
AmericanChopper wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I haven’t. Is dishonesty something you’d like to defend?

You've walked into work and told your boss that he was a fucking moron when you saw something that angered you immediately? Lieing about feelings is a basic human skill. If you never lied you would be a constant stream of unsociable behaviour that would get you shunned Minor lies are such a part of human society that it's a sign of some disorder if a child is actually incapable of lieing

A lie is saying something that's not true. It's not suppressing the a compulsion to act like a total jackass, no matter how much you really want to. If my boss asked me for an opinion on something I thought was a bad idea, I'd express my thoughts (with empathy). Honesty is not immediately blurting out every thought that passes through your mind, and it's not dishonest to withhold information that people aren't entitled to. You're (perhaps intentionally) confusing honesty with openness. Sometimes it takes courage to be honest, but in my opinion, there's more dangers in dishonesty.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#205

Post by lovich »

frisco wrote: post #162
freeone3000 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a contractor . That's the difference between him and an employee: He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. If he's not allowed to do this, chances are you have an employee.

Not true, limitations on subcontracting (or at least limiting it to approved subcontractors) are allowed and common. Just because he’s a contractor doesn’t mean NDAs are meaningless.

Limiting work to people with security clearances is an example of ok limitations. Adding so many limits that the acceptable people to do work are the single contractor means youve jaut made a constructive way to get around hiring a person as an employee

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#206

Post by abiox »

RightMillennial wrote: post #106
cascom wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is generally understood that candidates must consent to have their references checked. In what part of the application process did the candidate consent to you letting anyone you choose know they are looking for a job?

Pardon me if this is a naïve question. Isn't the point of references that they can be checked and verified? Why would you need to obtain explicit consent to contact the contacts when they've been provided? Isn't the consent implicit by virtue of them being supplied?

> by virtue of them being supplied

afaik, a backdoor reference is specifically _not_ a reference that was (intentionally) supplied.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#207

Post by deoxxa »

navs wrote: post #86

sigh > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, even when applying for dev roles? I've had even senior devs at popular local dev shops say LinkedIn is a "necessary evil" because it: 1. is easy to grep 2. you can find whether a candidate has similar connections to you 3. recommendations I get New Zealand is small and the social gra…

Australian here, but I've worked for NZ companies before.

Especially down in our corner of the world, it's all about who you know. If you've got a few people you've worked with where you can go "hey I'm looking for a new job soon, heard of any openings?", that'll get you wayyyyy better jobs on average than what ends up hitting the public job advertisements.

Speaking from experience, advertising a job publicly is what you do after you've asked everyone you know if they know anyone personally who would work well.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#208

Post by cwkoss »

cascom wrote: post #43
gumby wrote: post #31

> backdoor reference checks aren’t always considered kosher by everyone ?? These are the most important references. Many excellent candidates won't have a back connection but when they are possible they can make an important difference two ways: One is the way described here (or, "this person was OK but doesn't sound like they would work out for the kind of thing you want -- that was where they failed with us too.").…

It is generally understood that candidates must consent to have their references checked. In what part of the application process did the candidate consent to you letting anyone you choose know they are looking for a job?

> It is generally understood that candidates must consent to have their references checked.

Seeing as how there is some debate in this thread, I'd argue that that is not generally understood very well.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#209

Post by ng12 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #72

I'm a recruiter. Three anecdotes come to mind for this topic: #1 I once sent out a coding test email to a candidate. Not long after I got an email back from this candidate saying "Hey bro could you do this test for me please." or words to that effect. Obviously mistakenly forwarded it back to me instead of to his bro who he wanted to do his coding test. #2 I definitely got catfished but it was by another recruiter wh…

I've been wondering how often #1 happens. Our coding test isn't particularly difficult but it is timeboxed, and somehow candidates pass it who take 15+ minutes to string together a for-loop when they come on-site.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#210

Post by abiox »

lovich wrote: post #203
abiox wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. all of this is entirely within the scope of the contract. "subcontracting" is unlikely to be permissible in a variety of scenarios, especially if the material being worked on is even vaguely sensitive. when it does happen, it's typically in a larger organizational context and then there will usually be some vetting or approval process.

If you are controlling how work is done then you have an employee. If subcontracting is unacceptable and you are still hiring contractors then you are just trying to run around employment law, at least in the US

do you have specific citations or is this some ideological stance?

to me it makes zero sense to hire a vetted contractor who can then just toss say, classified data, over to some unknown random. it's a completely untenable proposition.

Post reply on HN